Portal 2 at GamesCom!

First of all, the most important news: Portal 2 is at GamesCom 2010, in Cologne, Germany. We’re hearing that the demo is now open and even playable for all! We’ll be bringing you any news and interviews we see.

The Valve, The DotA, and The Modders

After Jon St John let the cat out of the bag about the project Valve and IceFrog are doing, which has been revealed to be a remake/reboot of the Warcraft 3 mod “Defense of the Ancients”, possibly on Source, and possibly free.

Valve then registered a “DotA” trademark.

Soon after, Steve Mescon and Steve Feak, two of the mod’s original developers, who work at Riot Games, creator of ”League of Legends”, a game heavily based off DotA’s gameplay style, filed a trademark for “Defense of the Ancients”, under the name DotA-Allstars LLC, in an attempt to protect DotA, so that it can remain a “a community-owned product that modders, independent developers and game fans can continue to modify and play as often as they’d like”.

Nic, of Podcast 17, theorizes that perhaps the “DotA” trademark is a decoy. Why would Valve only trademark an acronym? We just hope Valve comes out on top and can release their project.

We’d like to thank him for helping make the article more accurate, as he’s been following the events closely.

Left 4 Dead News: Mutation Week 17

Last week, we had Mutation Week 17.

The Mutation that week was “Iron Man”, designed for all the diehard players that don’t play Mutations cause they’re too easy. Knock yourselves out, folks. All Realism rules are in effect, no ammo caches and no restarts. Your team loses, you go back to the lobby. No choosing levels inside campaigns, either you do it in one sitting or you don’t do it at all.

Last week’s poll results for the other week’s “If you don’t play a Mutation, then why?” poll were:

Last week brought a new poll: “How did Bill die?”. I voted “Overrun by Zombies”.

Next week’s mutation should be “Developer’s Choice”.

In addition, we had “2 Evil Eyes” on Valve’s 120 bi-weekly community campaign servers. They’ll still be up till next Friday, so you can still play.

There also was a sale on all L4D-related merchandise. No word on whether or not that will stay for next week.

Don’t forget about GameTrailers TV’s special Valve episode, which will feature info on L4D and L4D2’s upcoming DLC, Mac support, and some Portal 2 goodies. 12:30 AM PST, August 20th. Also airs on Spike.

Orion Goes On The Path of The Pro UDK Developers

Well, ain’t it a shame.

The “Mystery Days” have finally led us to a big surprise: Orion is headed towards Unreal 3, and a commercial release. The new game will be the first in a series. Targeted for early 2011, “Orion: Prelude” will appear on Steam, XBLA, and PSN. At least they finally added dinosaurs.

No word on whether the Source beta will continue to be supported, but you might as well consider it dead.

We wish em good luck, and this is the last time we’ll be covering the mod. Adios.

Freeman’s Mind: Episode 29 Released!

Lethal Stigma: Public Beta Released (And Source Code Release)

Lethal Stigma is a very ambitious-looking mod that attempts to bring a whole new twist on the HL2:DM experience, with entirely new gamemodes, and completely new weapons. It looks really great, and it’s definitely on our radar now!

In addition, since then, its source code has been released! Yes, Lethal Stigma is now entirely opensource. And it’s still under development! Bravo to the developers for this awesome act!

We <3 You Phillip Marlowe

Bonus Snippet: Valve + Apple = <3

God, everyone’s been telling me to cover this. Alright, are you happy?

Apple released a “Snow Leopard” (I have no idea what that means, it must be some rare near-extinct breed of the regular leopard or something) update for Mac OS X, featuring a ton of performance fixes for Valve’s Mac games, in particular Portal and TF2. It’s awesome to hear Valve and Apple are working together like that.